The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Codependence Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! At the end of today’s Epistle, God says that We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Dear Christian friends, How would you describe your relationship—your personal connection—to all these other Christians gathered here? Today’s Epistle suggests that we each ought to think of ourselves as codependent upon one another. For the moment, codependency is a negative thing. The medical world describes codependency as a one-sided relationship with someone who has great personal struggle in his or her life, such as addiction. Codependent relationships require more giving than receiving. Codependent people do not often have very high self-esteem. They need someone or something to come to them from the outside in order to reassure them, build them up or make them feel better about themselves. People say that Codependents need to be needed; they are “addicted” to the relationship they are in. Again, codependency is currently defined as a negative, destructive thing. We should change that. When I suggest that we ought to think of ourselves as codependent upon one another, I am NOT saying that we should act destructively toward one another. To the contrary, we should always give to one another the absolute best love and care possible! When I say that we should think of ourselves as codependents, I am saying that we should re-define the word codependence so that it describes who we are and reflects what we have now received through the mercies of God in Christ Jesus. We Christians have a long history of taking words from the unbelieving world around us and using those words to speak our faith. We have not hesitated to redefine those words in order to get the job done. For example, · When we speak about God’s *nature* and *being*, we use words that were once used by ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle or Plato. We Christians simply have given different meanings to the words *nature* and *being*. Unlike the philosophers, we use *nature* and *being* exclusively to describe what God says about Himself in His Scriptures. · Again, the word *Easter* is not originally a Christian word. *Easter* once described a pagan festival that celebrated the end of winter. We Christians would much rather celebrate our Lord’s resurrection victory over sin and death. In order to impress the joy of the resurrection upon the unbelieving world, we took the word *Easter* from the pagans and we changed its meaning. Today’s Epistle offers us another opportunity to steal another word and make in our own. In today’s Epistle, God says, We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Sounds like codependency to me! This is NOT a negative codependency, as the world defines the word, but rather, a codependency rich in love, full of forgiveness and overflowing with life! · Codependency is a one-sided relationship with someone who has great personal struggle in life. That pretty well describes the connection Jesus has with me! The personal struggle is sin. The struggle never goes away, and yet the faithful mercies of our God remain new for us every morning. One-sided is correct: You and I receive FAR MORE from our Lord than we will ever be able to give. Self-sacrifice is the name of His game, so to speak, and His giving to us did not end with His cross and death. As you heard from today’s Epistle, “*When He ascended on high… He gave gifts to men*.” Again, from today’s Gospel, “The Bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world… I am the Bread of Life,” says Jesus, “whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:33, 35). · It is also said that codependent people do not often have very high self-esteem. Perhaps self-esteem is overrated! Christ Jesus your Lord gave you something greater than self-esteem when He “*ascended far above the heavens*,” as you heard in today’s Epistle. Far better than self-esteem, Christ Jesus have given you “*the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers*.” Why has Christ Jesus given you these things? So that you may attain “*unity of faith*” and “*maturity*” and “*the measure of stature of the fullness of Christ*.” Divine gifts such as these make self-esteem turn pale in comparison. · People say that codependents need someone or something to come to them from the outside in order to reassure them, build them up or make them feel better about themselves. We Christians have a name for that very same need. We call it the forgiveness of sins, which is now yours in Christ Jesus. · People say that codependents need to be needed; they are “addicted” to the relationship. Today’s Epistle brings us to exactly the same point when it describes our life together in bodily terms. We have an unending need for each other because we are, as you heard, “*joined and held together by every joint*.” Or, as God says to each Christian in another place, You are the body of Christ and individually members of it. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you” (1 Corinthians 12:27, 14, 21) What benefits will we receive, if we should steal the word codependence from the world, redefine it and make it our own? The word codependence will could help reorient our minds and weave us more tightly together into what today’s Epistle calls “*the unity of faith*.” · If we become more deeply aware of the codependent connection we Christians have with each other, perhaps we will not be quite so quick to look judgmentally at one another and hold our sins against each other. Perhaps codependence can even help us to act more quickly in throwing a blanket (so to speak) over each other’s weaknesses and shortcomings, so that we may guard one another from the judgment and disgust of others. · Codependence might also help us to rethink the way we hold this precious gift of faith that God has given to us. For several hundred years (since the Enlightenment), we have tended to think that faith is a personal thing that we each individually hold while we stand together in the group. To use an analogy, individual faith is comparable to a bunch of different tennis balls—each one the same size and color—and we all get to hold one. Codependence will help us more deeply to realize the other side of the Christian faith, that the faith is also a corporate thing, a group thing, a mutual thing, a shared thing, a something we all hold together. Not so many tennis balls, but we all hold the same edge of one giant parachute. · Finally, codependence will help us to picture in our minds the sort of growth and maturity that God describes in today’s Epistle. Not my gain at your expense, and not your gain at mine, but rather, our mutual self-sacrifice and our corporate gain at the expense of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our “*one Lord*” who has given us “*one Baptism*” in order that we may share “*one faith*” in “*one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all*.” We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Or, to quote another lame lyric, “Yes, it’s true. I am happy to be stuck with you.”
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